Shirley Jones Albums (4)
'Show Tunes'
Release Date 9/1/1995
Tracks 10
Label Sony Special Products
See Album Tracklist and Review
What The Critics Say
With an assortment of orchestras (including ones led by Percy Faith, Frank DeVol and Lehman Engel), Shirley Jones and Jack Cassidy reprise Broadway hits like "Waitin' for My Dearie," "Nina," "It Might as Well Be Spring" and "You Are So Fair." ~ Keith Farley, All Music Guide
What The Critics Say
Shirley Jones, the young star of the Rodgers & Hammerstein movie musicals Oklahoma! and Carousel, married Jack Cassidy, the Broadway stage musical performer whose featured appearances included Wish You Were Here and Shangri-La, on August 5, 1956, and the following year the couple released this LP of songs from musicals and operettas that had played in New York and London between 1905 ("Kiss Me Again" from Victor Herbert's Mlle. Modiste) and 1934 ("I'll Follow My Secret Heart" from Noel Coward's Conversation Piece). By 1957, such material, the work of composers like Rudolf Friml, Jerome Kern, and Sigmund Romberg, was out of date on stage and film, but Jones and Cassidy applied their trained voices -- Jones' pure soprano, Cassidy's soaring tenor -- to it with sincerity and fervor, and Percy Faith gave them an accompaniment to support their best efforts. They didn't quite bring back the age of the operetta, but they showed that it could have a contemporary meaning, especially in its romantic sentiments. Cassidy soloed brilliantly on Kern and Oscar Hammerstein II's "The Song Is You" from Music in the Air, taking the title back from such pop craftsmen as Frank Sinatra, and Jones had her way with Herbert and B.G. DeSylva's "A Kiss in the Dark" from Orange Blossoms. But the rest of the tracks were duets, and the couple's real-life romance turned Kern and Hammerstein's "You Are Love" from Show Boat and Romberg and Hammerstein's "Lover, Come Back to Me!" from New Moon into impassioned musical statements. The interpretations bordered on classical music rather than pop, but they also brought new life to a virtually moribund form. ~ William Ruhlmann, All Music Guide
What The Critics Say
After their 1956 marriage, movie musical star Shirley Jones and stage musical star Jack Cassidy recorded a duet album of operetta songs, Speaking of Love, and a studio-cast album of Brigadoon for Columbia Records in 1957. In 1959, they returned to Columbia for With Love From Hollywood, a companion piece to Speaking of Love in which they revived songs from Hollywood movies released between 1934 and 1948, songs written by Harold Arlen, Irving Berlin, George & Ira Gershwin, Jerome Kern, Ted Koehler, Johnny Mercer, Cole Porter, Rodgers & Hammerstein, and Rodgers & Hart. If they had posed successfully as a new version of Nelson Eddy and Jeanette MacDonald on their previous LP, here they made like Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers, with equally satisfying results. That isn't to say they copied such performers; rather, they brought powerful musical identities of their own to standards like "Cheek to Cheek," "Let's Face the Music and Dance," "Long Ago (And Far Away)," and "Nice Work if You Can Get It." Jones, who had a history with Rodgers & Hammerstein, beautifully interpreted their "It Might as Well Be Spring" from State Fair as a solo, while Cassidy on his own had fun with Porter's "Nina" from the underrated score to The Pirate. If Percy Faith's charts for Speaking of Love had emphasized the art-house aspects of the operetta songs, here Frank DeVol treated the songs for what they were, movie songs, employing alternately playful and lushly sentimental string-filled arrangements. The result was a wonderful collection of movie songs. ~ William Ruhlmann, All Music Guide
